Slavic Scene Volume 16, Number 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TheNovember 2008 DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES & LITERATURES Letter From The Chair 2 Feature 3 Classroom Spotlight 4–5 Staying Connected 6–7 Highlights 8–9 In Print 10 Michigan Slavic Publications 11 www.lsa.umich.edu/slavic An image from Photography Sees the Surface, an MSP publication LetterThe From Slavic the Chair Scene Dear Friends The initiatives that we launched last year are off to a great start; we appreciate all of the help that we have gotten from many of you. Our undergraduate program’s new Polish major and the new “tracks” within our Russian major are attracting students in increasing numbers, and our interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to graduate education has met with an enthusiastic response from our current Ph.D. students. The concentration (major) in Polish Studies, which was activated just two months ago, already has majors, in addition to the students who are minoring in Polish language and literature. Demand for instruction in Polish language is on the rise as well; for the first time in several years, we had to add an additional section of first-year Polish to accommodate the thirty students who wanted to take the course. On the facing page, you can read more about the continuing success of the new tracks that we have already added to our Russian major. The Culture and the Heritage Speakers tracks are attracting students to the major and we have similar hopes for the “Global Russian” track which we plan to introduce next year. The unique feature of this latter track are the opportunities it will provide for using the language in the “real world,” both in this country and in Russia. Alina Makin is actively engaged in developing a pilot of the service-learning course which will be the keystone of this track. She has made contacts in local organizations who help recent Russian-speaking émigrés and older Russians who speak limited English. Our students can be of service in a number of ways—from translating, orally or in writing, necessary documents and forms, to helping these Russian speakers adjust culturally by talking to them in their own language about the everyday situations they encounter. Working with non-Russian adoptive parents of Russian- speaking children will be another extremely beneficial and challenging service activity. Alina has already met with an enthusiastic group of undergrads who will pilot the local outreach dimensions of the program in the Winter semester. A second key component of the Global Russian track will be a semester or summer internship in Russian during the final two years of study. We have welcomed an exceptional cohort of graduate students to our Ph.D. program in the last two years. You can read about them and their interests in this issue of Slavic Scene. Because their interests are quite varied, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, we have devised a series of graduate seminars that will be team-taught, covering material from several national cultural spheres. First up this Winter will be a seminar on Slavic and East European Literary (and Cultural) Theory, which will explore concepts and methodologies that emerged in Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia , Bulgaria and Slovenia, spanning a broad range that includes Symbolist, Formalist, Structuralist and post-Structuralist approaches. It is our intention to offer one such team-taught graduate seminar every semester. On tap for 2009 and 2010 are seminars on the avant-garde, research methodologies, cinema and dissent, and post-modernism. Much of the material in these seminars will relate closely to the particular interests of our graduate students such as literature and ideology and nationalist mythologies, and the contrasts and similarities across cultures, Russian-Ukrainian-Polish-Czech-Jewish-Bosnian- Croatian-Serbian (our current students are interested in comparative work involving two or more of the above national cultures). These seminars encompass not only the study of literature, but also history, philosophy, politics, and aesthetics more generally. We are also in the process of revising our required reading lists for graduate students and the structure of our qualifying exams in order to provide for greater individualization, so that students can focus their own course selection and study toward their particular scholarly interests at the same time that they acquire broad knowledge of the literatures they plan to be teaching. While I am on the subject of graduate education, I want to remind you about the special opportunity that you have to help us continue to provide tuition and stipends for our students during five years of graduate study. Our current cohort has been exceptionally outstanding in their ability to secure highly competitive fellowships; however, we will have to augment these funds considerably in order to make five years of graduate study affordable. Any donation to our Graduate Student Endowment or our Graduate Student Fund will be matched 50% by President Coleman (see the box on the last page of this issues for further information). However, this generous match, which can multiply the impact of any donation you make, is only in place until the end of 2008. Help that you can give us now will have an especially significant effect. Best wishes for a happy holiday and a healthy New Year to all of you, Herbert (Herb) Eagle [email protected] 2 TheFeature Slavic Scene Russian Concentration Continues to Draw Attention By Michael Makin The Slavic Department’s Russian concentration will be an important part of the Global track, which enrollment continues to grow. The two new will also require students to internship in Russia. tracks— “Culture” and “Heritage Speakers”— provide students with courses on Russian cinema, There is new energy in the Russian program ideology and culture, the intersection of Russian and new interest in Russia. The regularly taught and Judaic cultures, and other classes outside the “Russia Today” suggests that students from the traditional philological range. The second track, Social and Natural Sciences find the booming “Heritage Speakers,” offers specialized instruction Russian economy, driven by oil and gas, combined for students who have grown up with some Russian with the ever-exceptional Russian political stance, spoken at home, and who work on perfecting their intriguing. skills in the written and literary languages. These have brought in a new sort of Russianist, while the The success of the Heritage Track in the planned “Global Russian” track is expected to be concentration reminds us that there are more and equally successful. more young Americans whose families arrived from the former Soviet Union not too long ago. This year, RC Russian Program Director and Slavic The success of courses on Russian cinema and Department faculty member Alina Makin is piloting contemporary culture indicate that Michigan a service-learning course, in which students take students are aware of the flourishing of the arts their knowledge of Russian language and culture in the new Russia. Plans are already afoot to take out into the community, working with elderly advantage of the Sochi Winter Olympics to draw Russophones, helping new arrivals to settle, and attention to Russia’s sporting renaissance. It is a teaching classes about Russia to local schools. This great time to be teaching courses on Russia, and an even better time to be taking them. Nina Shkolnik (far right) and her “Russian for Heritage Speakers” class 3 TheClassroom Slavic Spotlight Scene Beyond St. Petersburg By Alena Gerasimova Last summer, I visited the most beautiful and This experience turned out to be, by far, the most romantic city, my favorite place in the world, the overwhelming, exhausting, difficult, and amazing majestic St. Petersburg. There I encountered a time of my life. strange phenomenon, white nights. Although physically exhausted, the fantastic white sky outside For two months I lived, breathed, literally became my window prevented sleep. In the heart of St. a part of the camp—where the sun doesn’t set Petersburg, I got lost in the art of the Hermitage, and leaders even dream of children. The campfires saw the breathtaking Cathedral of the Resurrection, were the most memorable experience not only for and witnessed the bridges part at 2 a.m., something the kids, but also for us—their friends and leaders. I thought only existed in the movies. We sat around the fire, close to our kids watching the fire dance, listening to a guitar with ageless Sure enough, time was flying and soon it was time Russian songs, drinking real tea, made from leaves to begin what I was sent there to do—work in a on nearby trees. children’s camp as a leader and English teacher. continued on next page Vladislav Beronja Before immigrating to United States and becoming a U.S citizen, Vladislav lived in Bosnia and Croatia. His preliminary dissertation work deals with 20th century Russian and ex-Yugoslav novels that act as archives or museums of literary tradition through citation of “classics,” transformation of the author into a reader, and the growing importance of memory discourse in 20th and 21st century. Vlad is also interested in reading as a site of memory in the age of its global decline. He has a BA in Comparative Literature (U-M). Aleksandar Boskovic Aleksandar was previously employed at the Institute for Literature and Art in Belgrade and authored more than twenty articles in various literary periodicals across Serbia. He has been editing “TXT” a periodical for literature and theory of literature, and his book “Poetic Humour in the Work of Vasko Popa” was recently published. Research interests include literature of the 20th century and contemporary literatures from the Balkans, Russian and East European Cinema, Russian formalism, Bakhtin, semiotics, cultural practice, poststructuralist theories of literature and art, theory of possible worlds, interdisciplinary studies.